Dublin based advertising agency Boys and Girls has won a global award that represents the pinnacle of creative excellence. Its winning entry was for its campaign “The Sound of Sixteen”, a celebration of 100 years of radio in Ireland.
According to Boys and Girls Partner and Executive Creative Director Rory Hamilton: “D&AD is the most prestigious advertising award in the world, bar none. It’s also the toughest to win. While Cannes has become about big brands and taken on a client focus, D&AD remains the creative gold standard. To win a D&AD Pencil award is something that happens in very few careers in our industry. We are the only Irish winner this year, and the only winner in radio for the past decade which is an even more impressive achievement. Since the award was first established there have only been 8 other Irish winners. We’re proud to join that very exclusive club.”
The awards ceremony took place in London this week where the agency received a wood Pencil in the Radio & Audio / Radio Advertising category.
The Sound of Sixteen tells the dramatic story of the birth of Irish radio during the 1916 Rising and was re-enacted on-air simultaneously by 37 radio stations nationwide in Ireland on Monday, April 25, 2016 at 5.30pm, one hundred years to the original date and exact time of the declaration of the Irish Republic, Ireland’s first broadcast to the nation and the world.
In a joint initiative between RTE Radio and the Independent Broadcasters of Ireland (IBI) a highly evocative 80 second morse code themed radio experience titled “The Sound of Sixteen” imagined the battling sounds and dangerous atmosphere of the times. It also reprised the morse code message written by James Connolly and transmitted by Marconi operator David Burke.
